The present invention relates generally to electroluminescent displays ("ELDs") and more particularly to an ELD and ELD driver with improved brightness control.
ELDs comprise a matrix of pixels, each located at an intersection of a column and a row electrode. Electroluminescent material between the row and column electrodes illuminates when there is a voltage potential across the row and column electrodes. The voltage on the column electrodes is controlled by a column driver. The voltage on the row electrodes is controlled by a row driver. Typically, a voltage potential is applied sequentially to each of the row electrodes while a voltage is applied to the appropriate column electrodes to illuminate selected pixels in each row.
The brightness of each pixel in the ELD is related to the voltage across the pixel. Although the brightness can be controlled by varying voltage, there are several drawbacks. The brightness of the ELD is difficult to control with the voltage. For a given voltage, the rightness between two ELD panels may vary. The brightness of the ELD may also vary with temperature for a given voltage. Further, implementing more than a few voltage levels is expensive. Thus, even sixteen-level shades are expensive to implement using voltage control.
Some ELDs utilize variations in refresh rate to achieve brightness control. Generally, if a pixel is illuminated at a higher refresh rate, it will appear brighter to the human eye. If the pixel is illuminated less frequently, it will appear dimmer to the human eye. In order to implement brightness control, a single video frame may be displayed at a refresh rate several times higher than the video frame rate. For maximum brightness, a pixel would be illuminated during each of the several refresh cycles. By decreasing the number of times a pixel is illuminated over the number of refresh cycles, the apparent brightness of the pixel is controlled. However, this method is also expensive. In order to implement sixteen-level brightness, the refresh rate must be at least fifteen times the frame rate. 60 Hz is generally considered the minimum displayed frame rate to avoid flickering. Thus, the refresh rate to achieve sixteen-level brightness would have to be 900 Hz. Column and row drivers which have to refresh each of the pixels at 900 Hz are expensive. Increasing the number of shade levels further rapidly increases the cost even more.